"A wise and frugal government which shall restrain menfrom injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." (Thomas Jefferson)

Saturday, October 20, 2012

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God. (Oath of Office of the Congress enacted in 1884)

Yesterday Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) who is a Romney surrogate, released sensitive information on Libya. Why is Issa investigating Libya instead of Chairman Rogers of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence? Is it because Rogers wouldn't allow public hearings or leak information on Libya because he always puts Country over Party? That is not a trait that some of today's Republicans want as they will say and do anything including lying to get Romney elected. This stunt by Issa should immediately remove the Libya investigation from Issa's Committee to Chairman Roger's Intel Committee because Issa and Chaffetz cannot be trusted with sensitive information:

Issa uploaded scores of sensitive material and didn’t redact names of Libyan civilians or local leaders, exposing them to physical danger from the very people the Obama administration is investigating regarding the September 11, 2012 attacks.

If that does not break the oath of office that members of the Congress take, then I don't know what does. This comes on top of the outing of a CIA base in Libya from this same Committee of Issa:

Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a “consulate” and a nearby “annex,” was a CIA base. They did this, helpfully, in a televised public hearing.

So Issa accomplished outing the location of a CIA base in their big show, but no doubt this will magically be blamed on Obama by Republicans. Dana Milbank wrote, “When House Republicans called a hearing in the middle of their long recess, you knew it would be something big, and indeed it was: They accidentally blew the CIA’s cover.”

This was pure politics with the debate on foreign policy coming up Monday night. IMHO, the FBI needs to launch an investigation into Darrell Issa (R-CA) and his co-conspirator Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) who is a Romney surrogate:

This week Chaffetz came through with the promises he made to his Mormon brother (Romney). Before a national audience, Chaffetz threw all sense of decency out the window when he started throwing every scrap of mud he could find at the White House, the State Department, and everyone in between.

These are the kind of people that are now Republicans in the House putting the Party and election of Romney over the Country. Is that what Americans want from their House of Representatives? I don't think so and if the Democrats take back the House, they can blame people like Issa and Chaffetz who cannot keep their mouths shut even foreign affairs and intelligence operations. Some Republicans will do and say anything to make Obama a one-term President even if they have to lie which we are seeing daily. Any member of the House or Senate that has been involved in obstruction and releasing information that should not have been made public needs to resign, but that would take class and honesty but most of today's Congressional Republicans have the class and honesty of a gnat.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) has placed several Libyans lives at risk in the course of investigating the alleged security issues regarding the deaths of four Americans in Libya on September 11, 2012.

Issa uploaded scores of sensitive material and didn’t redact names of Libyan civilians or local leaders, exposing them to physical danger from the very people the Obama administration is investigating regarding the September 11, 2012 attacks.

Speaking to The Cable, an administration official said, “Much like WikiLeaks, when you dump a bunch of documents into the ether, there are a lot of unintended consequences. This does damage to the individuals because they are named, danger to security cooperation because these are militias and groups that we work with and that is now well known, and danger to the investigation, because these people could help us down the road.”

Issa is doing the exact same thing his party did when we first discussed going into Libya and they were warned by their own party policy makers to stop giving aid to our enemies just because they wanted to cause problems for President Obama.

So, Darrell Issa has leaked important information while investigating alleged leaks of security — again. He is doing more damage in this investigation than our enemies could have hoped for. This is hardly Issa’s first go at hacking up a partisan witch hunt of this administration.

This isn’t just your typical Republican incompetence. The Republicans don’t care that they’ve endangered our work and civilians in Libya over their alleged concern over Americans killed in Libya.

They’re politicizing Libya and hoping that by leaking info that even Wikileaks wouldn’t have leaked (Wikileaks offered the State Department the chance to redact sensitive material unlike the Republican Party), they can stir up more chaos and violence in order to blame it on Obama before the election.

Let’s see. Wikileaks has been named an enemy of the state for their document dumping, and yet Republicans are still running wild after dumping unredacted documents that Wikileaks would not have without first running it past the State Department.

For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration.

House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration’s request.)

Ryan’s 2014 budget cuts non-defense discretionary spending, “which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.”

Years ago when I worked for the Air Force, my boss used to get the daily intel paperwork from FTD from the Air Force listening posts and media overseas. He would go through the report every morning highlighting with the 4-star Commander needed to see. After he had highlighted the report, it went to the Commander. We had a local Congressman who demanded to see the report but he was turned down as he didn't have the necessary clearance.

Will never forget my boss saying that if they gave that report to any member of Congress not on Intelligence or Foreign Affairs, they might as well release to the media themselves. That is exactly what happened when the Darrell Issa Committee was given information that should have stayed in Congress not been released. This is the same Republican Investigation Committee that leaked the location of a CIA base in Libya.

Never thought I would be saying this, but for the good of the Country and for our Federal employees around the world, it is time to throw out Republicans and bring back the Democrats to head the House. What is a shame is that we have some good chairs like Chairman Rogers of Intel but we cannot afford two more years of Issa and his investigations and the Ryan budgets that cut necessary foreign operations to give the Defense Department money for weapons systems they don't want.

The GOP has proven with their obstructionist agenda and now leaking this information including outing a CIA operation, that they should not be in charge of the House because with that comes Committee Chairs and Issa has no business ever being in charge of an investigative committee again. IMHO Issa shouldn't be a member of Congress after his stunts for the last two years putting the GOP and Romney over the Country he swore in his oath to serve:

The current oath was enacted in 1884:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

According to Think Progress, “NRA: Practice Range” is billed as a “network of news, laws, facts, knowledge, safety tips, educational materials and online resource” for the organization.The National Rifle Association released a new app on Sunday that includes a gun range equipped with coffin-shaped targets, and the option for players to simulate using a military-grade sniper rifle.

The app includes what it calls “9 true to life firearms,” and allows players to download an MK-11 sniper rifle setting for 99 cents. The rifle can shoot 750 rounds per minute.

Follow by Email

Subscribe To Democrats for Sale

Political Image

Dems/GOP Fighting -- Will they Finally Work Together for the Country? Will replace this image when they do. (11/07/2012)

Quotes

"We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this." President Barack Obama, Newtown, CT, 12/16/2012

******

"I don't think that the way to correct a spin from the left is to try to impart a spin from the right.... [A]n information flow distorted from the right would be just as much a disservice as distortion from the left. What we really should be after... is accurate information. And I don't see what any conservative or anybody else for that matter has to fear from accurate information." M. Stanton Evans

******

Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY)

“For heaven’s sake, you have Grover Norquist wandering the earth in his white robes saying that if you raise taxes one penny, he’ll defeat you,” he told CNN back in May. “He can’t murder you. He can’t burn your house. The only thing he can do to you, as an elected official, is defeat you for reelection. And if that means more to you than your country when we need patriots to come out in a situation when we’re in extremity, you shouldn’t even be in Congress.”

******

"We are are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation.

******

John Stuart Mill was a 19th century political philosopher:

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it." John Stuart Mill.